For Navi Mumbai Airport To Succeed We Must Pray For Better Roads And Air Traffic

In a few months, Mumbai city will see the commissioning of a second city airport in Navi Mumbai. Two airports in a city or in close proximity in a state are rare. Goa is an example, the other is Delhi NCR, which has two more aside from the international airport in Gurgaon. One is in Hindon and another one is coming up soon in Jewar, close to Noida, both in Uttar Pradesh.

The Navi Mumbai airport has been conceptually in the works for decades. As things usually go with large infrastructure projects in the country, it is only now nearing completion. A change in ownership from the GVK Reddy group to the Adanis may or may not have speeded up progress in the last lap.

To begin with, the no-frills carriers will shift from Mumbai’s Terminal 1 in Santacruz to Navi Mumbai Airport. All this was the good news.

Much Too Far

In April, when the airport promises to start operations, most of Mumbai’s residents will have to allow anywhere between three to four hours of cardiologically stressful conditions to reach the airport.

Add that to the two hours before arrival time, and passengers would have spent half a day or more just reaching the departure point.

Mumbai is designed to discourage you from leaving, particularly if you are northbound or inflict such damage on your mental and physical faculties that you will choose to stay put.

The Atal Setu, the six-lane expressway, connects the new airport to only the eastern part of the city and not the western part.

The eastern and western parts of Mumbai are two worlds apart and have been so for decades.

A promised 4.5 kilometre-long bridge to connect to the Atal Setu and thus the west and the east and to that new coastal road quite literally lies abandoned.

Building this important connector was never going to be simple.

After much to and fro we are told now that work on a most critical component, a segment of this connector that crosses the north-south railway lines in central Mumbai will start now.

This is years after the columns comprising the rest of the bridge have been erected.

The project was conceptualised in 2013 to connect east and west and send traffic from and onto the Atal Setu.

Not surprisingly, it stalled. It was revived in 2016, stalled again and then revived in 2021.

Now, an existing east-west bridge, over 100 years old, will be dismantled and will create unimaginable traffic chaos given the already poor connectivity.

Blame for the delays has been liberally passed around, including on right of way and buildings obstructing the path.

Yet work started on the columns leading up to this bridge across the railway line because presumably, it is good form to construct where you can and then think about the rest later.

Mumbai is of course littered with such half-done bridges.

From all prior experience, this bridge could take two years or five or six.

The promise is a record-shattering 12 months, according to officials quoted in The Print.

Expressways are constructed quicker in India today. A 1,000 km stretch is often delivered faster than a 100-metre bridge in Mumbai.

A reading of local news indicates that the local municipal corporation and the Railways, which control the railway lines and the surrounding territory, are not seeing eye to eye.

Mumbai’s Shifting Axis

We are also told that when it is a double-engine government - the same party runs both the centre and the state - things should move faster.

Evidently, not in the state of Maharashtra where the problem is too many engines trying to drive a single train.

Mumbai's shiny new coastal road does miracles for those commuting from north Mumbai to south Mumbai.

What would have taken maybe 45 minutes to an hour from Bandra to Marine Drive or the other way around to an hour is now wrapped up in 10-12 minutes.

The only hitch is that the axis of the city has shifted several times in the intervening years.

One new point of this shifting axis lies in Bandra Kurla Complex or BKC which is increasingly becoming difficult to navigate.

Most people who work in BKC tell me they want to run from there. But where will they go?

Parts of central Mumbai, including Worli are looking promising once again.

An underground metro rail through south Mumbai which has taken over eight years against a promised three to four to build might shift things around again.

When it is actually commissioned of course.

Aloof Civic Body

Mumbai lives on and off its dreams, of better infrastructure and a better life which is always beyond reach.

Mumbai also survives in shocking contradictions, a smooth coastal road on one end and potholed and uneven roads leading to it, bad enough to keep the country’s orthopaedic surgeons busy for a lifetime.

Those who work in the richest civic body in the country do not notice or feel the poorly laid and relaid roads with all their uneven bumps including at traffic signals slowing down traffic further.

Back to the airport.

It is an unfair strain on passengers if they have to spend half their lives reaching the airport and back from it.

The constituency that wants the airport constructed and delivered evidently does not care much about how a good number of passengers get there.

Meanwhile, let's hope air traffic continues to grow at the same rate or faster — 161 million domestic passengers flew last year, up 6% — than it did last year.

If not, there are other, perhaps bigger problems to think about than just the lack of roads to the airport.

That part we can live with, like always.